The body is like a car: the older you become the more care you have to take care of it - and you don't leave a Ferrari out in the sun.

Isn't three quarters of life a guilty pleasure?

I say, 'Use it or lose it.' I have my own fitness regime, which is centred around stretching, free-weights and fast walking. I also have a trainer half of the year, as I spend my summers in the south of France where I swim a lot.

Doing 20 minutes of stretching, light weights and floor exercises three times a week takes the same amount of time as a long coffee break - and eating a tuna fish salad, sardines on toast or scrambled eggs is surely preferable to a Big Mac or KFC.

The cosmetics industry has much to answer for. It's a multi-million- pound confidence trick based on giving women endless hope, courtesy of overpriced little pots.

And we have not found any generational gap at all. If he wants to go a football game, he goes. If I want to go to a fashion show, I go. We don't have to do everything together. But we like doing most things together.

My mother was a domestic goddess and Mother Earth figure. She was sweet and placid - just what the perfect wife was supposed to be and I was determined not to be.